and your company is just the thing i needed tonight
by LiitleLeaf
Summary: but sometimes they feel like children in need of comfort after a bad dream; only it seems as if their nightmares never end.


**A/N: BECUZ 2X05 FEELS HOLLAAAAA. This will also continue next week when 2x06 visits the next chapter of this arc. probs not with klayley but there will be another chapter. perhaps before next week if I can get around to writing it. so ya. stayed tuned and all that jazz. Enjoy:)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own _The Originals_ _  
><em>**

* * *

><p>Sometimes-<p>

- well, _most_ times, she can't sleep. She'll lie awake, tossing and turning and trying to avoid the neglected yowling that comes from the creaks in the nursery.

It's a sound she can't tune out no matter how many times she slams the door shut in the dead of night. In fact the noises seem to have grown louder ever since she ripped the room apart some weeks ago.

So she begins to avoid her room during those lonely nighttime hours. She lurks, she feeds, she wanders the never-emptying New Orleans streets and she thinks that one day, should this war hot have that fabled happy ending, she'll fade into New Orleans folklore: the very essence of the living dead as she travels back and forth across cracked pavement and cobblestone looking for a peace she'll never find.

A lost young mother looking for Hope she'll never find.

(And with bleary eyes and a deflated appearance, Hayley thinks she certainly looks the part.)

Except for tonight.

She's no less lost and alone but she doesn't take to the streets. She even settles for a blood bag (or two or three) stocked in the compound's kitchen. And then, only after she's attempted to take care of herself in the wake of the day's drama, does she find herself standing in the antechamber of Klaus' room, lingering just short of the threshold as she peers into the darkened space and listens to the hum of his soft breathing.

_In and out. Out and in._

Regular. Even.

**Alive**.

She listens and takes comfort in the barely audible sighs and mumbles and relishes them, the one good thing she'd been able to do today.

Perhaps that's why she's standing here- to reassure herself that he's alive, that _she_ helped save him from Mikael's homicidal clutches, that Hope still has her father, that Klaus will save Elijah so what's left of their family remains whole.

And just like that, Hayley finds herself stepping over the threshold of the sliding double doors to creep to his bedside. She pauses again, if only for a minute to deliberate. But at the end of the day she needs the comfort, the nearness. Klaus is alive and tangible and, currently, he's all she has.

(And if the circumstances were different, maybe she'd laugh at that because, seriously, who would have thought it would come to this.)

Carefully, Hayley slips beneath the covers and inches as close to Klaus' warmth as she dares. Still, she keeps her distance from the slumbering hybrid, small though it may be.

"I don't recall inviting you for a slumber party."

Klaus' warm breath fans out across her face, its nearness startling her almost as much as his voice had.

"I thought you were asleep."

Tired blue-green orbs flutter open and stare back at her. "Clearly you thought wrong."

Where his words once would have made her roll her eyes, perhaps throw a scoff in for good measure, she smiles. It's a fluff of a thing, small and sad and strained across her face and, as such, it quickly fades and leaves them in silence.

He simply watches her, studying. Always studying as if she's a puzzle he can't quite figure out because every time he thinks he has her pegged, she surprises him.

"What do you want, Hayley?" he finally asks.

There's an edge in his groggy voice, a gritty combination of pain, exhaustion, frustration, anger, and sadness she expected.

(She decides right then and there that she hates it.)

"Can't sleep," she replies with a shake of her head.

Klaus sighs and runs a hand over his face, tries to wipe the sleep out of his eyes before starting to push himself up. "Give me a moment. I'm certain there's someone mucking about in the Cauldron for you to prey on."

"What?" It takes her a moment to process what he said. "No, Klaus- _wait_." He stops, the rustle of bedsheets ceases and he merely looks at her with a creased brow. "Not what I meant."

Another sigh. He looks away, towards the curtains dancing in the breeze from open windows. "Then what is it you meant? 'M no bloody psychic."

"Nothing." Swallowing, she makes to leave. "Good night, Klaus. Get some rest."

He surprises her with a hand clasping about her wrist, grip firm yet Hayley feels she could easily break away from it. She feels that he'd let her. But she doesn't. She turns to look at him over her shoulder much as she had the night his fingers had run over her Crescent mark. "Klaus?"

"Well come on, then." He tugs so she's forced to turn back and face him, only then does he drop his hand to pull back the covers for her. "Is this what you wanted? To tuck in next to someone, listen while they murmur platitudes and lullabies that assure you everything's going to be alright?"

"Kind of degrading when you put it that way," she says, looking at the spot he's opened for her and hesitating just a moment before climbing in. Only when she's situated, curled up on her side and surrounded by the hybrid's scent does she speak again, her voice nothing more than a whisper. "But, yeah. Something like that."

Klaus' lips press into a thin line, an arm tucked beneath his head and pillow, and he swallows once before answering. "We'll get him back. Come first light you can take me to where this trail begins. We'll start there and we won't stop until the death wish of holding my brother captive has been granted and Elijah's safely returned to us. That I promise you."

Hayley offers him a half-hearted fluff of a smile. She nods. And to her surprise, Klaus returns it.

With his face softened and relaxed and a bit more rested than it had been when she first saw him earlier today, it's easy to see the worry in his eyes and etched into his brow. Honestly she thinks that she only recognizes it beneath the mask of confidence and determination because she's laying inches away with nothing to look at, nothing surrounding her but him.

It's a nice, subtle reminder that his brother _is_ important to him; that he needs Elijah just as much, if not more, than she does.

Averting her gaze from the intensity of his eyes, she looks down at his chest and stares. There's a mark there that hasn't quite healed. The skin is raised and pink and still looks slightly agitated and though she'd only arrived at the party after the stake was pulled from his chest, it's a reminder of everything she could have lost today- the family she could have lost. She reaches out and let's her fingers graze the area over his heart. He flinches at her touch, much like he'd done with Cami earlier, and Hayley immediately pulls her hand back.

"It's nothing a good night's sleep and warm body or two won't fix come morning." She looks up at him and he smirks. "Not the first time I've had a white oak stake plunged through my chest." The she-wolf rolls her eyes. "Thank you. For coming. You could have easily kept searching for Elijah. I was prepared to die."

She shakes her head and, recovering her bravery, replaces her finger over the still-healing wound; feels his heart beat beneath them, hears it, and relishes it.

She may not have much but she has him. And, in a strange way, that's far more comforting than Hayley ever thought it would be.

"Yeah well next time you run head first into a kamikaze mission, tell someone where you're going first? Could have saved me some time. Thank god Cami's perfume stuck out like a sore thumb."

"It was good practice, then."

"I'm serious, Klaus." She pauses. "You may have been prepared to die... but there's a little girl somewhere in this world who needs her dad. Okay?" Another pause. "I can't do this without you."

He nods, somewhat gruffly, and Hayley knows her remark hit home.

"'M not going anywhere, little wolf."

"Good. Now get your beauty sleep. We've got a missing Original to track down in the morning."

(He's gone when she wakes up to grey light seeping through drawn curtains.)

(And she's _still_ tucked into his bed.)


End file.
